Author Archives: Oto Dušek

In the previous post, I wrote about testing requirements, which led us to create Modular sensor platform. I told you about ASP.NET Core technology, which can simplify developing web API server application. You could try developing your own API server. Today I am going to introduce you USB to CAN converter and universal board for connecting sensors.

USB to CAN converter is the STM32F4 powered device for translating USB communication to CAN bus and vice versa. The converted is USB HID class based device. The HID class was chosen because there is guaranteed delay of packets, which is an important parameter in some cases of measuring a response time of testing devices. It is connected to the web server by USB micro and there are two RJ12 connectors on the board. RJ12 connectors are used for connecting sensors or actors (see image below).

Sensors and actors

Sensors and actors can be connected to USB converter via cable with the RJ12 connector through which it is powered and it can receive and sent messages from web API server. The board on CAN bus have to be addressable by a unique address. So each device has its own encoder. Using encoder on the board, you can set the address of the device (see image below – the black box with orange shaft). The encoder is 4 bit, so you can add up to 16 different devices.

The universal version of the board has 3 connectors (the blue ones). These connectors you can use for connecting different kinds of SPI or I2C sensors. The following sensors are in process of development:

RGB sensor – For sensing status of LED of a tested device

Paper sensor – Detection of paper in printer

These sensors will be introduced in upcoming parts of this article series. The advantage of the universal board is that it simplifies developing new sensors. You do not have to develop custom PCB (Printed Circuit Board), but you can use this board, connect sensor and write firmware specific to the sensor

The firmware is written in pure C using STM32 HAL library (Hardware abstraction layer). The initialization code was generated by STM32CubeMX, which is a graphical software configuration tool that allows configuring MCU by graphical wizards. The tool allows configuration of pin multiplexing, clock, and other peripherals configuration. Then you can generate C project for any common embedded IDE.

Both PCBs were designed in CircuitMaker by Altium, which is free also for commercial use. There is no license to worry about. The disadvantage is that you have only two private projects, others must be public (see circuitmaker.com).

Summary

The article describes the hardware part of the Modular sensor platform. The USB to CAN converter and the universal sensor board for developing custom devices compatible with the platform. The concrete developed sensor and actors will be in next parts of the Modular sensor platform series. This post also describes tools and technologies that were used for developing converter and sensor board. If you are interested in developing embedded systems, you should definitely try STM32CubeMX and CircuitMaker.

Y Soft is using a robotic arm for testing multi-functional devices, but the robotic arm is not enough for our testing purpose. We need to interact with the device in different ways than just tapping on the touchscreen. A Screen of the tested device is already captured by a camera, therefore it is needed another feedback from a device and react to that feedback. Due to that, we developed Modular sensor platform, which can be easily plugged into a computer (Web API server) by USB. Via REST API protocol you can read information or command different kinds of sensors and actors. The following diagram illustrates how the platform is composed.

Web API server

As this diagram shows you can connect multiple sensors to the server via USB to CAN converter. When the web server starts it sends discovery packet. From the responses, the web knows what types and how many sensors are connected. After initialization, it starts listening to sensors commands from clients.

The web API server is written using ASP.NET Core framework. In the following link, you can find a tutorial, which shows you a simplicity of creating a RESTful application and from which components the server is composed.

The .NET Core is cross-platform so the web server can run on any device running Linux, macOS or Windows.

Try to create ASP.NET Core application based on tutorial above or you can just create a console application (see link). The Created application can be built for any supported OS, for ARM there is available only runtime, not SDK for developing an application (see SDK support, ARM Runtime).

Build for a device is as simple as run this command

dotnet publish -r <Runtime identifier>

in the directory of the project (after -r switch you can specify any supported platform, for more information use this link). You must also install prerequisites to the target device (see link), then you can copy this folder

Summary

This article shows the composition of parts of the platform and how parts communicate with each other and that the platform is not limited only to one operating system. It works with Windows, Linux, macOS, even on ARM architecture. In next part of an article, I will tell you about the development of USB to CAN converter and sensors.